Pirate Anime FAQ Updated

Joe Curzon writes "The Pirate Anime FAQ has finally been updated, after year of me being far to busy to do anything on the internet! The FAQ would have been released sooner, but my request on Slashdot.org produced some "interesting" feedback via e-mail. This update includes a new and improved Fansub section, which also covers Digisubs. Scanlations have been added as a point of interest. Additionally the Audio CD and DVD sections have been improved with more details on the Pirate Companies and how to spot their "products". I would also like to say that feedback from readers and the industry is critical for keeping the FAQ up to date, and without their previous and continuing support The Pirate Anime FAQ could not exist. Finally I would to remind people to be extremely cautious when buying from on-line auction sites such as eBay. The most common e-mail I get sent is from concerned fans who have just found out that they have bought some pirate goods off a seller who claimed what they were selling was legitimate."

Comments

So what?

[gloth]

What's so special about this FAQ that it received so much attention here? Wasn't too long ago that even the thought of updating it made it to the frontpage

Really...how big of a deal?

[neiffer]

I wonder how much of a big deal this is. Sure, protecting copyright is important, but I don't think anime expansion in the United States would have happened as fast or expansively without copyright violation. Are there are real stats (not trumped up RIAA-style statistics) saying how much of a problem this is? Also, would an FAQ be misguided towards the real problem? Younger children buying cheap ripoffs?

Re:Really...how big of a deal?

[TomHandy]

Not really...... the fansubs that helped to pave the way for this were not really being sold (and there wasn't a big market for bootlegged anime)..... most fansub distros distributed fansubs essentially for the cost of the tape and shipping and handling. No-one complained about this because there wasn't much of a commercial anime market anyway, and they did recognize the role fansubs played in getting interest in commercial anime. I don't know about the example you cited.... by 1989 there was a nascent commercial anime market, but i'm not aware of any companies that were selling unauthorized stuff on any significant scale.

As far as people "whining" about their copyright, I don't know exactly what you mean. Which people are you saying are whining? The Japanese companies are "whining" about digital piracy in general to the degree that it is rampant throughout Asia, and it is also devaluing their properties, and there are people profiting from their products. The companies in the US generally are only requesting that people stop fansubbing when they license a show, but they are hardly "whining".... every company is concerned about bootlegging and pirates selling bootlegged material, but I'm not sure what is hard to understand about why companies would dislike this.

Anyway, I hope that clears it up... I'm still not completely sure what you were asking above, but anyway, the US market for anime was helped by fansubbers, fans of these shows who fansubbed and basically helped to distribute anime for no profit, and helped to raise interest in anime, and to some degree to help companies determine what shows might be worth licensing and bringing out commercially. People who sold fansubs or pirated material were never looked upon well..... whatever people were SELLING fansubs or bootlegs at "county fairs in 1989" weren't seen as positive by fansubbers or Japanese or US companies.

Hope this helps. And at least explains the views on fansubbing, and bootlegs sold for profit, etc.

-Tom

Re:Really...how big of a deal?

[TomHandy]

I've read the FAQ.... but your premise is incorrect. First off, the Japanese companies have always had a problem with unlicensed material (wallscrolls, posters, stickers, etc.). They've never tolerated them in the US, Japan, Asia, or anywhere else. Your point that these companies weren't complaining about unlicensed peripheral materials is dependent on the assumption that at one time they turned a blind eye to the companies who produced this unauthorized material.... but that's really never been the case.

But anyway, to answer your fundamental question.... yes, now that it has expanded into the "mainstream", there is a larger complaint about unauthorized peripheral materials like models, toys, stickers, posters, wallscrolls, etc. etc. etc. This is because the presence of them is even more damaging now that there is more money to be made because there is more of a market...... but the value of their products is diluted by bootlegged material. This has always been the case though, so it's not like this has changed... it has just become more prominent.

So, again, I'm not sure what exactly your complaint here is. I guess the point you are trying to make is something along the lines of: anime wouldn't be popular today without bootlegged material.... therefore, the companies somehow owe the bootleggers some leeway and should let them continue bootlegging their material, profiting by selling unauthorized products using copyrighted images, etc.

But I just don't think this holds water. The bootlegged material is basically just people stealing copyrighted material.... these bootlegs were the same in Asia and the US. The presence of bootlegged products in the US wasn't specifically accountable for the rise in popularity of anime, and there is not anything about imported bootlegged material that merits any special treatment.

I think that's ultimately what this boils down to. It wasn't the bootlegged toys, stickers, posters, etc. that were majorly responsible for building the exposure and cult status of anime in the US. Whatever part it did play (i.e. from import shops importing bootlegged material and selling it as legitimate), it wasn't any different than the legitimate posters, stickers, wallscrolls, toys, etc. that were also being sold in the US and imported legitimately. These things, and fansubs, anime clubs, and some early anime releases in various forms (i.e. Star Blazers, a modifed version of Space Battleship Yamato, followed by Robotech, a modified version of SDF Macross, Genesis Climber Mospeada and Southern Cross) helped to get the ball rolling.

So, just to be crystal clear.... those same Japanese companies have always complained about people and companies who illegally used their copyrighted material without authorization. Nothing has really changed in that regard. And the complaint has always been legitimate.

-Tom

Uhh

[Kethinov]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't selling pirated stuff even more cracked down on that downloading/sharing it? I mean fuck, that's a total kick in the face to the author. It's one thing to acquire stuff illegally, but it's another to go around selling it as if it was your's to sell. Why not just sue the crap out of everyone who sells pirated stuff and skip the consumer FAQ? Because the consumer really doesn't care whether or not it's licensed.

Let's not get crazy...

[cubyrop]

I can appreciate that the prevailing mode of slashdotters, especially when it comes to piracy, is one of legality and reason (or so they would like to seem). Really though, is a FAQ for anime piracy _truly_ relevant?

The reasons that piracy exists in anime is because a) most anime fans do not speak japanese (although they do certainly try, don't they) and therefore require the intermediary of fansubbing (illegal), and b) obtaining imported products, especially soundtracks, are _prohibitively_ expensive. This isn't like "go to Tower and pick up the CD for 15 bucks" ... these things run 30 and 40 dollars for the real mccoy.

And as others have no doubt already said (or are about to say), this is not a situation where the market conditions are changing per se, as is the case domestically with CD sales; rather, this is a case of a market expanding in a way ultimately beneficial to both consumers and producers.

There hasn't been a single case of a Japanese company cracking down on this in the US, at least that I'm aware, so really in all honesty, this FAQ comes off like that one kid in class who reminds the teacher that she forgot to give homework. So you bought a pirated CD by mistake. What are you going to do now, send it back? Or perhaps write a FAQ about it?

Re:Let's not get crazy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because most anime fans are basically honest, and they like anime and want to support the companies that import it.

From a more practical perspective, sometimes it is hard to tell what is a licensed or unlicensed product if you are new to anime.

Re:Let's not get crazy...

[Nimrodel]

Actually, I've found, those aren't really the reasons that people pirate anime. The most prevalent reason is that when anime are dubbed into English, they tend to be butchered, scenes are cut, translations are totally wrong (not to mention some of the voices are downright terrible). People watch pirated subtitled anime because it's 'truer' to the original. The people who pirate these are people who really love the series, so the do as much to preserve all the original meaning. Second, many very good series just aren't brougth to America. Many wouldn't translate very good (I personally know at least one that was so full of of jokes based on Japanese culture/language that it would nearly be impossible to translate and keep the real meaning). Pirated anime has much more variety than whatever you'd find on television or at the store in America. I do agree that actually buying all this anime would be prohibitively expensive. That point you made is extremely true.

Re:Let's not get crazy...

[Qzukk]

I do agree that actually buying all this anime would be prohibitively expensive. That point you made is extremely true.

Of course. This is why you don't buy all the anime. I pick and choose what DVDs to buy on a regular basis. Sure, I give preference to series I have seen and liked on fansubs, but I don't use my fansubs as an excuse not to buy and support a series I liked.

Think about it this way: BGC 2040 exists because US fans bought enough copies of the original that ADV went to the AIC and said "You know, BGC completely tanked over on your side of the ocean, but look, if you make us a new series, we'll sell it over here." And so they did, and somewhere in there, the idea of the US companies supporting Japanese animators was born. So, if you have a series you like, buy their DVDs. Encourage everyone to buy the DVDs. Just maybe, the Japanese company will say "gee, this is pretty popular over there, lets make another season." And so Big O season 2 was born (just in case you thought it was an isolated incident that wouldn't happen for your favorite series. While the Japanese economy continues to slump, expect this to happen more often).

As for your "totally wrong" translations, what are you comparing these to? Hopefully not the horrid engrish subs on some HK discs. The fansubs? Not translating a word because you can't think of a good way to do it is a cop-out. Throwing more subs on the screen to explain the word is great for an educational video, but would never fly on cartoon network. And thats when the college student with a couple of semesters of Japanese over what ever he's learned from watching other shows gets the translation correct... When I started getting into anime, the VHS fansub groups actually hired professional translators to do the work. The digisub generation has decided that doing it right isn't worth not being the first to the servers ("mass naked child events" ring a bell to any AnimeJunkies fans?)

Well, thats the end of my rant. If you're going to pirate a show thats SO GOOD and you don't think the US release will do it justice, buy the Japanese release. I've got several R2 DVDs. With a dvd-burner, a decent mpeg2 demuxer/muxer, a dvd sub generator, and a script you like you can make your own subtitled DVDs that will be much higher quality than any chinese subbed dvd or divxed-to-hell fansub.

I do, and while I know there won't be a second season for Kokoro Toshokan or Saishuu Heiki Kanojo, I am preordering the pilot DVD for the second season of another show (I won't mention it since I don't want to attract too many "anime is for pedos" trolls. You can figure out which series it is) and I'd like to think that I helped the second season become reality.

hogwash...

[segment]

Why do some retailers sell them? Some retailers are unaware that they are selling unlicensed goods, this could be because they don't know enough about anime goods, or maybe they want to make a bigger profit, as unlicensed goods are cheaper. Some retailers knowingly sell these goods for numerous reasons.

In many major cities there are hundreds of retailers selling them, hell I go into my local vid store and find bootlegs left and right. The author did a nice page of trying, but the fact is, many people from here who followed the link probably clicked the back button a few seconds later.

Fact: There are many out there who use the net for an escape, and many of those who do probably don't have the money to amuse or entertain themselves otherwise. So is it that much of a threat for Farmer Bob's son to download something he'll probably use for a week then toss to the side? Most articles only focus on the hardcore bootleggers, and they never exclude people like I just described in their stats. Hell I dont even know where they get their stats from anyway. No one has ever called my house to ask my views on this, yet in most articles you would see something state "The majority of users blah blah blah" I've spoken to my friends, and they've spoken to their friends about these stats and whether or not someone contacted them, and you know what.... No one I know or they know has ever been contacted, and these people are on comps way too much.

So the moral of the story is this... Absolutely nothing... People are going to do what they're going to do, it's happened in every industry, and it will continue doing so... Full circle...

Re:Is this correct?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignorance is no excuse to the law.

Re:Is this correct?

[neiffer]

While that might be true in some circumstances, it is not true in copyright law. If they were true for copyright, Hilary Rosen could have sat a K-Mart with pirated (arrrr...) copies of House Party III that *looked* real and brought up federal charges against any poor sap that was unfortunately enough to pick up a copy. I think the same issue applies here with anime.

Digisubs and Incentive

[Entity79]

"Normally when a title is licensed fansubbers stop distributing it, however because digisubs are so much easier to distribute a fansubber can no longer prevent others copying a digisub. Since most digisubs are of reasonable to high quality (again it depends who authors it etc), the incentive to purchase the licensed copy is less, this results in more casual or unconcerned fans not bothering to buy the title when it comes out on DVD." Well, actually, there IS an incentive to buy the series when it is released in the USA (or elsewhere). Bootlegs don't have the extras found in the original.(IE: posters, trading cards, collectible cases) Digisubs are not a replacement for the DVD itself, simply a way of `tiding over` until it is released here. Also, many series are not released into the US, so digisubs are the only way to see certain series. (Crayon Shin-Chan for example)

RTFA

[Daetrin]

This is not "something a little underground," and this is _not_ about fansubs. This is about professional pirates operating out of Taiwan and mass producing physical goods to sell at a profit.

I have no problem with fansubers and file-sharers, for anime or for mainstream media, but it really pisses me off that there are people out there making a profit off of this stuff. If i'm actually going to spend money on a product, i damn well want the profit going to the people who deserve it, not some criminals somewhere.

Yeah, import CDs are expensive, and given the market for cheap pirated ones i can't figure out why the real companies don't make cheaper American versions. The high prices may justify not buying the original in your mind, but that doesn't excuse buying counterfeit goods. Either cough up the extra $10 or $15 for the real thing, or just content yourself with mp3s.

Fansub groups

[Anonymous Coward]

For the most part, the fansub groups only distribute unlicensed (meaning not currently being distributed by a legitimate US outfit) anime. Most of the fansub groups don't try to hide either. Tracking them down, would be much easier than chasing after people on P2P networks.

Because the anime copyright holders aren't out suing the fansub groups to oblivion, I assume there's an informal understanding between them. The fansub groups do a lot to promote the anime to an audience that the anime producers may not have the time or resources to focus on. There are many animes that would never make it to the US audience otherwise. Likewise, when the animes do get licensed in the US, the fansub groups almost always stop, even if they are only a couple episodes from completing the series (eg. Wolf's Rain).

Re:Interesting double standard?

[RealityProphet]

When people "pirate" the MPAA's latest, no one cares, but when people "pirate" anime, people here get upset. Why?

Because, when people pirate MPAA's latest, it is for personal use. The type of pirating done with anime that gets people angry is when it is resold as original merchandise.